The Witnesses
by Aiffe
Summary: They can say he existed because they were there, if only in dreams. / Major spoilers for Cold Blood. / Two-shot, complete.
1. Chapter 1

Summary: They can say he existed because they were there, if only in dreams. [Major spoilers for Cold Blood]

* * *

Chapter 1

* * *

_I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory. _

-Andre Breton, "Manifesto of Surrealism," 1924

* * *

The Doctor wasn't happy.

Of course, it wasn't like he wore his feelings on his sleeve all the time, but she was getting to know his face. To an outside observer, he would appear no different, but Amy knew something was wrong.

There wasn't any subtle way to go about it, or if there was she wasn't patient enough for it, so she just came out and asked: "Hey, what's with the face?"

He glanced at her irritably. "You tell me, you're the one who hit it with a cricket bat."

"That was over two years ago," Amy countered. He hadn't even bruised, anyway. "Don't change the subject."

He looked at her, and no, he wasn't angry, he was just…tired? There was _definitely_ something off about him. "Which was what, again?" he asked.

"Your face."

"Last I checked, it's still there."

"There's something wrong with it."

"Good enough for you to snog the daylights out of, if I recall." The memory only gave him an instant of smugness, before she saw it give way to even more sadness.

"Okay, you are telling me what is going on," she insisted. "Right now. Because you keep looking at me like…like, I don't know."

"Like you've lost something."

"Yes!" Amy agreed instantly. "But…why?"

"Because you have," he told her.

Amy smiled. "Don't be so dramatic! What could I have possibly lost?"

He didn't answer her, he just fingered something in his pocket she couldn't see.

"What've you got there?" she asked. "Is that what I've 'lost'?"

"It's nothing," he said, and pulled his hand away. His pocket didn't even show a bulge—like the TARDIS, they didn't seem to lack for space.

"Yeah, like what I lost," Amy said. "_Nothing._" She paused, mid-grin, and touched her cheek gingerly. "H-Hey, Doctor?" she asked, her voice suddenly shaking. "Why am I crying?"

He didn't even exactly look at her, his gaze just sort of skirted around her, like how the perception filter makes you look at everything but the TARDIS when seen from the outside. _Like something you see, but don't want to see_. "That's probably my fault," he said. "I tried to help you remember."

Amy wiped at her face. "This is…this is ridiculous. You're saying I just forgot something?" she hesitated, at the look in his eyes, "some_one_?"

The Doctor muttered something under his breath that sounded like, "You're probably better off," and turned to the controls. "Don't worry about it," he said, loud and confident. "You're absolutely right, there's nothing to worry about. Come over to this star chart, pick a planet, any planet. If you pick one without a breathable atmosphere, we'll get to use spacesuits and everything."

Amy shook her head. "No…you can't just do that! _Tell me._ It's going to drive me mad if you don't."

"You wouldn't believe me if I did."

"Fine, try me."

"More like you _can't_ believe me. Because, in a sense, for you it would be a lie, because for you it never happened. Your timeline has been rewritten, and it's probably not good for you to exist in two timelines at once."

"How many timelines do _you_ exist in?"

"That's different, I'm a Time Lord."

"So?"

"So, I have a third strand of DNA which is time-sensitive. I can wrap my mind around these kinds of things. Humans have…a different coping mechanism."

"Forgetting," she finished for him.

"That's not the only reason you wanted to forget, probably," he said. "It...hurt."

Amy pieced together the parts of the puzzle she already had. "So, there was…something. Or someone. Or several someones. And I changed history so that it never happened, or they were never born? But no, we were in the future. Unless I met them even further in the future. Or…" she focused. It was hard for her to grasp this concept, so she knew she was on to something, something her brain didn't want to understand. "The clerics. One by one, they went into the crack." She covered her mouth. "There was a crack there. You reached into it. But I didn't lose you. What did I lose?"

The Doctor hesitated. "Amy, what's your earliest memory?" he asked.

She thought on it. "When I was four. The neighbors had a big dog, that always ran up to the fence and barked at me when I went by. I was afraid of it."

He smirked. "Amelia Pond, afraid? Of a dog?"

"I was only four," she said defensively. "And that was before the crack in my wall."

"Do you really remember it?" he asked. "Think harder."

"Of course I remember it. My mum used to tell me all about it. It made it hard for her to take me anywhere, because the fence ran right by the walk, and the dog barked at us the whole way from the pavement to the door. She had to carry me into the house, and make a second trip if she had any packages." She paused. "I thought about that a lot, because after she died, I treasured any memory of her."

"So, you don't actually remember it happening. You remember remembering your mum telling you it happened."

"I don't know. I can sort of remember it," Amy said, uncertainty creeping in.

"What color was the dog?"

"I…I just remember feeling scared."

"How old were you when it stopped? Did the dog move away, or did you, or did you stop being afraid of it?"

"I don't know. I just have this one sort of snapshot."

"How big was the dog?"

Amy held her hand up at about waist-height.

"Have you ever seen a dog that big?"

Amy's hand lowered to a more reasonable height. "Lay off me, I was _four_."

"You constructed a memory. It's probably built mostly on fact, on a real memory somewhere deep down of feeling afraid, and of your mum's stories. You told yourself the story again and again so you wouldn't forget it, and you've reconstructed a facsimile of it, but you don't actually remember being there, with the dog. You might have even added details, over the years, to breathe new life into the fading fragment of memory. It was a black dog, can you remember it now?"

Amy frowned. "How did you know? I sort of imagined it as a black dog, but I wasn't sure…."

"I didn't know. I gave you new information which filled a void, and you pictured it in your mind. Because you didn't have anything better to go on, it felt real to you. But it wasn't. So you see, I can't tell you what you've forgotten. You'll make a false memory out of it, and it'll feel real, but it won't be, and the fake memory will get in the way of the real one. You'll build around that seed of loss, the same way you built around the seed of fear. If you're to remember, it has to come from inside of you."

"What, so no hints? I have to remember it on my own? But you said that in my timeline, it never even happened!"

"That's right."

"So…it's hopeless!"

The Doctor nodded slowly. "I'm sorry, Amy, I am. Go to sleep, try not to think about it, and when you wake up, don't try to remember this conversation. Your brain will realize it doesn't belong in the narrative of your life, and eventually, it too will fade."

Fresh tears were coming down her face. "I can't just forget someone. I _can't_. There's nothing worse than being forgotten."

"You can, and you have," the Doctor said. "And there are worse things. Sometimes remembering is worse."

"I've lost enough," Amy said. "First my parents, then, when I was seven, I lost you." She looked at him, her eyes wide and searching. "But I didn't forget. I kept their memory alive, and yours too. Remembering gave me strength, made me who I am. If I've forgotten someone, then I've lost a piece of myself, too."

The Doctor's expression was heavy. "I did try, Amy." He brushed her tearstained cheek with his hand, tenderly. "I _did_ try."

"Well, try something else," Amy said stubbornly. "What jogs the memory—a song? A scent? Give me some kind of hint, at least. Remind me of something that doesn't ring true."

"Doesn't ring true," the Doctor repeated, thinking. "Do you remember when I told you to look out for that?"

"It…feels familiar. But I can't quite recall it, almost like something I dreamed."

"Yes, a dream!" he said, his excitement building. "You _do_ remember. Well, you should at least remember some of it, not _everything_ was erased. The Dream Lord, do you remember him? He gave you a choice."

Amy frowned. "There was…some kind of pollen, right?"

"Yes! Think back."

"I dreamed of a star. A cold star." She shivered involuntarily.

"Very good. And what was the other choice?"

"I don't…." Amy said, putting her hands to her head. "I can't. It's a dream. I'm no good at remembering dreams, they always fade the moment I open my eyes. It's like the memory exists on a separate reality."

And here the Doctor stopped, as if struck. "Well, of course they do. Dreams have nothing to do with reality. You remember people who never existed all the time, in dreams. And who's to say they really don't exist?" He stopped, just as suddenly. "This is your last chance, Amy Pond. If you go on with this, there's a chance you'll remember something that will make you very sad. You can choose to go on, to not remember, and I won't hold it against you."

Amy shook her head. "I want to remember. It's like there's something following me, out of the corner of my eye, and every time I almost-see it I want to cry, then I forget it again and that's somehow worse."

The Doctor's face was serious. "Very well then. I hope you understand that there's no going back." He set the controls and pulled a lever, and the TARDIS sang.

When they stopped, Amy walked towards the door, without asking where they'd gone, but the Doctor called out to her.

"Don't go out there just yet," he warned, "Or I'll never get you back."

Amy hesitated. "What's out there?"

The Doctor smiled, that sort of smile when something is very, very cool, but also very, very dangerous. "Dreams."

He left the console room, up the winding stairs to the TARDIS's labyrinthine hallways, and Amy followed quickly, knowing how easily she could get lost if he got even one turn ahead of her. Navigating the TARDIS was more difficult than navigating any network of tunnels or hallways on Earth, because the distance you walked didn't seem to have much relation to how far you actually went. The same space could be occupied by two different rooms, and shortcuts could take what felt like several kilometers off a trip—or add them, if you were careless. The only thing comparable to it was a text adventure game she'd once played, which she tried to map out on a piece of paper, and found that the way the rooms connected to each other was entirely without rhyme or reason, and could not be depicted on a physical map. The only way to navigate it was by rote memory, disregarding one's natural sense of direction, except she wasn't sure the TARDIS actually kept everything in the same place all the time, and had no idea how the Doctor managed to find anything.

Yet, find things he did. Soon they came to some sort of infirmary, with beds curved as though warped in some surrealist painting, and cabinets full of bottles and implements she couldn't name. "Oh," the Doctor muttered. "That's where the swimming pool went." He didn't seem pleased. "Part of it, anyway."

The floor was recessed, and about shin-deep with sparkling, chlorine-scented water. The Doctor waded right in, without bothering to take his shoes off or anything, and pulled an old-fashioned mortar and pestle from the cabinet. After mixing several ingredients to a fine powder, he stuffed the powder in clear, hollow capsules, came out and handed Amy one. "Don't take it just yet, but hang on to it," he said.

"What's it do?" Amy asked.

"Wakes us up." Without explaining further, he plunged again into the tunnels, his shoes squelching this time. They went to the wardrobe, and he dug through a box of assorted hats and masks that, like just about everything else here, seemed to be bigger on the inside—the box was only about knee-high, but while digging, nearly all of the Doctor disappeared in it. _Time Lords,_ Amy thought, unimpressed. _What a lot of showoffs._

Eventually, he emerged with two gas masks, looking like they came from completely different eras, and tossed Amy one. He dashed back to the console room, and Amy followed.

"Okay now," the Doctor said. "Take your pill. It's controlled-release—no effect for about twenty-four hours, then a dose of powerful stimulant." He swallowed his pill, and Amy followed suit.

"Out there is loaded with psychic pollen. We won't so much as get out the doors without falling asleep without these," he said, putting on his gas mask. "We're on another planet, might as well sightsee a little," he continued, his voice now slightly muffled.

Amy put her mask on, and he opened the doors. Before her was a stunning sight: the first landscape she'd seen that really drove home that she wasn't on Earth anymore. The sky was a mottled, stormy grayish-purple, and around them spread a meadow of tall, waxy grass, the spikes of which gave off a silvery luminance, collectively giving off more light than the sky. The air seemed thick and dusty, faintly glowing with drifting pollen. When the wind blew, the luminous fields waved, and bright tracks of silver floated into the air, spiraling and curling and slowly dissipating.

"I'm not asleep yet, am I?" Amy said, breathless.

"Not as long as you have that mask on," the Doctor said, closing the doors of the TARDIS behind them. "Welcome to Karass Don Slava, the land of dreams. It's a rare privilege to see it while awake."

As they walked out into the strangely glimmering grassland, the Doctor slipped easily into the role of tour guide. "This is the only place in the universe where the psychic pollen can grow, and there are no interstellar-travelling species on Karass Don Slava, but other species collect the pollen for various medicinal and recreational uses. Probably picked up our pollen on Alfalva Metaxis."

The Doctor reached down, and picked up something resembling a frog, with closed eyes, or possibly no eyes. "There are native life forms here," he said, "but they're all asleep. All dreaming. Maybe even dreaming the same dream. So their bodies wade through a reality they're never aware of in their existence." The frog-thing walked off his hand, oblivious, and the Doctor caught it in his other one, and laid it gently on the ground.

"How do they not starve to death?" Amy asked.

"They dream about eating, probably. Could be triggered by smelling something good. Nearly everything here's herbivorous, since they lack the ability to hunt. Some, like our friend there, just absorb nutrients through the mud. It's a more relaxed way of life than you have on Earth. Less direct competition. Everything is born asleep, lives asleep, and dies asleep."

They walked further, and Amy gasped at what she saw crouched together in a clearing. "Doctor…are those _people_?"

"In a manner of speaking," the Doctor said. "Am I 'people'?"

Amy smirked. "You told me once that you weren't."

"They're not human, anyway, if that's what you mean. Though, who knows if they have some human blood in them. Enough have been lost here, crash-landing or trying to harvest pollen, breathed a whiff of the air and fell into the planet's dream forever."

"Well, I figured they weren't," Amy said. "They are _blue_."

The group of blue people were hunched together, uncommunicative. Some idly chewed on grass, others just stared ahead blankly. Amy found their gaze very unsettling, but in the low light, couldn't make out why at first. As she got closer, her breath caught in her throat.

"Their eyes," she whispered.

"A mutation, maybe," the Doctor said, sounding somewhat unsettled himself. "Logically, they should be blind, or at least have sight that they use on some vestigial level of consciousness." But they didn't. Their eyes were turned around in their sockets, pointed _inwards_.

They hurried away from the blue dreamers, and saw one apart from the rest, stumbling blindly, without the tranquility every form of life on this planet seemed to possess. He stopped and angled his head in their direction, listening to the sound of grass crackling under their feet.

Amy poked the Doctor's arm suddenly in alarm. "Hey. Is that blue guy watching us? Well, not watching…listening?"

The Doctor looked at the strange blue man, and she could see pity in his eyes. "It's an evolutionary war of sorts," the Doctor explained. "The pollen makes everything sleep, and uses the psychic energy for its life cycle. But sometimes lifeforms develop a resistance to it. They wake up. For all the good it does them—the entirety of their culture's dreaming without them, and they're locked out, stuck in a reality none of their kind can see."

"He must be so lonely," Amy said.

"Oh, yes," the Doctor agreed. "For them, there's nothing left in the waking world. They're always alone. Rare enough that they're unlikely to find each other, but worse, so feral and unsocialized that they wouldn't know what to do with another like them if they did find one."

Amy stared at it, and the blind creature shifted uncomfortably, as if it could feel her alien gaze on this world where nothing had sight. "He has more in common with us than he does with his own kind," she said. "Can't we…do anything for him?"

"I don't think so," he said. "Even if we tried to help, he wouldn't understand. And we don't have the right to make decisions for him. Even if he's lonely, that doesn't mean he wants to leave his home, or be forced asleep. This is the only world he knows."

He turned to walk away, and Amy followed.

When they'd come to a quiet, gently rolling valley, the Doctor sat down, and motioned for Amy to sit beside him. She joined him, thrumming with anticipation.

"Just, one last warning," the Doctor said nervously.

"I told you already, I'm serious about this. I don't care if it hurts. I want to remember."

"It's not that," he hedged. "If you recall from last time, what we'll be dealing with is primarily my own inner darkness."

"Yeah," Amy said, then thought on it. "I do remember a piece of it—your inner darkness fancied me."

"No, it didn't," the Doctor said. "If it fancied you, it would have _had_ you. But, it will try to hurt you. Well, really, it will want to hurt me, but it knows seeing you in pain is a good way to do that."

"Wait, why did you think this was a good idea, then?"

"Because, remembering will hurt you," the Doctor said. "And if you knew…it would hurt me too. I have faith in my own inner darkness to take the straightest course to that pain. The 'Dream Lord' will be able to hurt you in ways I can't, ways that are necessary for you to remember."

"What do you mean, it would hurt you too?" Amy asked. "What did…what did you do?"

Without answering, the Doctor grabbed his and Amy's masks at the same time, and said, under his breath, _Geronimo_, before pulling them both off.

Amy's first instinct was to hold her breath, but by then she'd already gasped. She looked suddenly around herself, at the Doctor, at her hands.

"Nothing's changed," she said. "We're still awake."

The Doctor also looked around himself, "What makes you so sure?"

"If it's a dream, it's exactly the same as reality," she said. "Could it be from those pills we took?"

"Oh, I don't think we're awake, Amy," the Doctor said, touching her shoulder lightly. She followed the direction of his gaze.

Standing awkwardly, his hands in his pockets, was a man about her age. He was rather normal-looking, very much human, wearing clothes that wouldn't look out of place walking down the street on Leadworth. He had short, light-brown hair and a strong profile which might have seemed more commanding, if not for his self-effacing body language and downcast eyes. "Hello Amy, Doctor," he said, his tone somewhere between apologetic and resentful.

Amy stepped forward and looked him over up and down.

"Do I look familiar or something?" he asked.

"Never seen you before in my life," Amy said, wide-eyed and astonished. "How did you know my name? Who are you?"

"I suppose I'm the Dream Lord," he answered. "And I know lots of things about you. Well, pretty much everything, or that's what I thought. I thought I knew that you could never forget me."

Amy turned to the Doctor. "Dream Lord? He's better-looking than last time, isn't he?" She paused at the look on his face. "Why does he look like that, though?"

"Isn't it obvious?" the Doctor asked. "To hurt me."

"Hurt you?" the Dream Lord repeated, affronted. "I'm hardly the first to die of loving you, or even the most important." He smiled, full of rage. "I thought you might be happy to see me. But if you want _pain_…."

Birds sang, and Amy and the Doctor fell into each other, each trying to hold the other up before they collapsed themselves.

* * *

When Amy opened her eyes, it was to an orange sky. She looked quickly for the Doctor, and found him lying next to her, a look of absolute dread on his face.

"Where are we, Doctor?" Amy asked. She sat up on the red grass. It was cold and dry, a strong but steady wind blowing, the kind of wind that had been blowing forever and would continue forever, until it pushed down the mountains. Her hair whipped around her, catching the light of the twin suns in a fiery glow.

The Doctor got to his feet. "Someplace very not good." But despite his words, there was a longing creeping into his eyes.

A child meandered towards them, her eyes lighting up when she saw the Doctor. "Did you go away?" she asked. "I've been looking everywhere for you!"

"Who is that?" Amy asked.

"A memory," the Doctor said, "Just…a memory." He turned away from the little girl, and seemed to be willing his legs to walk away very, very hard, but turned back instead, the battle lost.

"A memory of what?"

"My daughter," the Doctor said. He looked at the child like looking at her burned him, riveted.

The girl was about six or seven, with bright gingery hair and dressed in a yellow gown. She smiled innocently at Amy, and looked back at the Doctor. "Who's she, Daddy? Is she visiting us?"

"Enough," the Doctor hissed under his breath. "Even you can't want to go down this road. Even you wouldn't be so cruel."

The Dream Lord reappeared. "Why not, Doctor? After all, it's what you took from me."

They fell. When they opened their eyes again, the Doctor was breathing like he'd been holding his breath. He hadn't even taken stock of his surroundings yet, but he seemed relieved. Wherever that place was, his distant home with the orange skies, it must have been the cruelest thing in his mental arsenal, because he didn't seem to think anything could possibly be worse.

Amy tried to get to her feet, but found an unexpected weight pulling her down. With a cry, Amy's hands flew to her swollen belly. "Doctor!" she yelled. "Doctor! I'm pregnant. Why am I pregnant?"

"It's just a dream," the Doctor said.

"I…I can feel it kick," Amy said. She looked up at the Dream Lord, with his dark, sad eyes. He had a little ponytail this time. It was kind of adorable. "Is that what I lost?" Amy said under her breath. "Was I pregnant? Did I lose a baby?" Her voice was becoming panicked. She gripped the Doctor's arm. "Tell me, did I lose a baby?"

"No," the Doctor said, at the same time as the Dream Lord said, "Yes."

Amy whipped around to face the Dream Lord. "I had a baby? With you?"

"You would have," the Dream Lord said with a shrug. "Past, future, I don't have any of them anymore."

She stood up carefully, and looked at the Dream Lord very closely, searching his face with her eyes. Her belly bumped between them, an unexpected bulge, and he put a hand on it. He was wistful, and gentle, and it wasn't hard to imagine that she had loved him very much.

He leaned forward, and whispered in her ear, "Amy, what's my name?"

Amy was silent, distraught.

The Dream Lord stroked her hair. "Perhaps it will come to you." He turned to the Doctor. "Once again, there will be two dreams. But you're not in this one." He raised his hand imperiously, and the Doctor struggled, his eyelids fluttering. "This is the dream of what my life would have been if _you_ had never existed." The Doctor collapsed on the ground, asleep.

Amy knelt by him, with difficulty. "Where did you send him?"

The Dream Lord's smile made her shiver. "I just want a quiet day with my family. I granted him the same." He stood over her like a god, and the world grew dim.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

* * *

Look in your heart and see  
There lies the answer,  
Though the heart like a clever  
Conjuror or dancer,  
Deceive you with many  
A curious sleight,  
And motives like stowaways  
Are found too late.

_What shall he do, whose heart_  
_chooses to depart?_

He shall again his peace  
Feel his heart harden,  
Envy the heavy birds  
At home in the garden,  
For walk he must the empty  
Selfish journey,  
Between the needless risk  
And the endless safety.

_Will he safe and sound_  
_return to his own ground?_

Clouds and lions stand  
Before him dangerous,  
And the hostility of dreams.  
Then let him honor us,  
Lest he should be ashamed  
In the hour of crisis:  
In the valley of corrosion  
Tarnish his brightness.

_Who are You, whose speech_  
_sounds so far out of reach?_

-WH Auden, "The Witnesses," 1933

* * *

Amy woke, warm and safe, in her bed in Upper Leadworth. Her body was folded into her husband's, her back to his front, his hand trailing over her pregnant belly. Waking up had gotten easier. At least the morning sickness had stopped.

Sleepily, her mind went over the jumbled mess of her dream. There had been, what, a time-travelling alien, that she'd known since she was seven, and a giant eyeball and stone angels who—she shook her head, and wondered if she ought to start keeping a dream journal. _Otherwise, I might just forget it…._

"Good morning, honey," her husband said, and Amy smiled at the sound of his voice, then realized something very disturbing. She couldn't remember her husband's name.

She sat bolt-upright. "What is it, Amy?" her husband asked. "It's not the baby, is it?"

Panicked, she tried to remember things about her husband. He was completely familiar to her. She _knew_ she knew him. But she couldn't remember how they met, or their wedding, or how they'd made the baby she was carrying. It was all feelings, no facts.

"The baby," Amy repeated. "What are we going to name the baby?"

Her husband laughed. "I was just going to let you name it."

"Oh?"

"I trust you, Amy."

"Well, I was thinking," Amy hedged, "If it's a boy, we might name him after you."

He quirked an eyebrow. "Now, that's just mean. What did that poor baby ever do to you?"

"Are you kidding me? The nausea, playing football with my kidneys…"

Her husband seemed to be thinking on it. "I suppose you do have cause for revenge. It'd be confusing, though."

_Augh, why won't you just say your name?_ Amy thought. But then her husband sat up and moved close to her, his eyes heavy-lidded, adoration for her clearly written in every line of his face, and somehow, she didn't care what his name was.

She kissed him, and it definitely wasn't a first kiss, even if she couldn't remember any others before it. Her lips remembered. He, too, clearly remembered the feel of her body against his.

"I don't have work today," he said huskily in her ear, and her pulse quickened.

They made love, slow and gentle, in bed on that lazy Sunday morning, sunlight coming through the closed curtains and turning everything quietly golden. She rocked on his lap, her arms around him, his face pressed into her breasts, then looking up at her with great love. There was something painfully sweet about each sensation, as though she knew in her heart that this would be their last time, and was memorizing every inch of him.

Afterwards, they lay side-by-side, breathing heavily. "That was different," he said to her. "I mean—not bad. Like, the exact opposite of bad. Amazing," he fumbled.

Amy was suddenly afraid she'd revealed her memory loss inadvertently. "Different how?" she asked.

"Well," he said, and moved in even closer, his breath tickling the hair behind her ear. "Usually, you scream my name."

Amy started, and her husband laughed. "Kidding. Though you do sometimes." He smiled warmly at her.

"But," he said, "that _was_ different. Reverent." He kissed her forehead tenderly, and Amy had the strangest sense of déjà vu.

* * *

As he made her breakfast, Amy wondered if she ought to tell him that something was wrong with her memory. She really ought to see a doctor about it, especially given her pregnancy. It could be serious.

But, against reason, she felt strongly reluctant to disturb their peace. They were happy, like this. She didn't want to scare him, or ruin this beautiful day. So she sat at the table with her chin in her hand, watching him make fish fingers and custard for her (how did he _know_?) and kept this one secret. _Just for today_, she thought.

* * *

After breakfast, they cuddled together on the sofa with the telly on, her husband flicking through a medical journal. Amy had already come up with a ready list of names she could call him in a pinch—honey, darling, sweetie—and wondered if she could call him 'Doctor' too, now. Yet somehow that didn't feel right to her.

"Oh," she said. "I remembered a bit of my dream."

He looked at her interested. "Was it good?"

"I don't know. It was…strange. I was a traveller in space and time."

Her husband laughed. "Were you, now."

She nudged him with her foot. "Don't laugh at me. You were one too. We were both there. And there were vampires."

"In space?"

"No, in Venice. Though they were from space. Actually, they were _fish_ from space."

"Now you're just pulling my leg."

"I know, I know, it's a daft dream," she said.

"And I was there?"

"Absolutely!" Amy said. "I couldn't have done it without you!"

* * *

There wasn't really anything that remarkable about that day. Their lives didn't change, they hardly even went anywhere, except for a stroll around the neighborhood in the evening. Yet, somehow, it was a perfect day.

It was on their walk, as the sun set, that Amy began to feel that sense of something just outside her awareness creeping in again. Something about that orange sky.

"Are you all right?" her husband asked.

"You, always hovering and concerned ever since I got pregnant," Amy said, with a light punch on the arm.

"My name isn't 'you'," he said with a sniff.

Amy tried to laugh. "Does it matter?"

"It does," he said. "It makes all the difference in the world." The skies were looking oranger, even in the east.

Someone had told her once, in her mixed-up memory, to look for the thing that didn't ring true. Which rang less true, the dream with the vampire fish, or this, _this…_

She held her husband tightly. "This is real," she said. "I know this is real. It has to be."

She expected him to look at her like she had sprouted a second head (like the people of Alfalva Metaxis, why did she know this?) and tell her to stop being silly, of course this was real, what _else_ could it be?

But he didn't.

After a long pause, his reply came, "It's real to me. And if it's real to you, then it's real."

"Real to you? But who _are_ you, really?" It was breaking her heart to say that, he was her husband, and she loved him, really, truly. But out of everything, he rang less true than the orange skies and snow-capped mountains in Upper Leadworth, he was the one thing that didn't fit.

"That depends on you," he answered cryptically. "Who am I? Say my name, Amy."

She shook her head, feeling tears brimming in her eyes, and pressed her forehead against his. "I can't remember," she said, perusing every tattered fragment of her memory. She did find something, though, not exactly what she'd been looking for, and pulled away suddenly.

"Doctor!" she called out, and to her husband, the Dream Lord, "What did you do with him? Where did he go?"

The Dream Lord sighed, and birds sang.

* * *

"Doctor," Amelia said appreciatively.

Her Raggedy Doctor stood before her, his hair still blond, his face freckled. "My dad's gonna kill me for what you made me do to his shirt," he said.

"Who are you more scared of, him or me?" Amelia demanded.

"Definitely you," he said, though he sounded pleased, almost worshipful.

"Well, the Raggedy Doctor isn't afraid of anything. Not even the crack on my wall."

"Who'd be afraid of a crack on a wall?" he asked lightly.

"You'd be afraid of _this_ crack," Amelia said warningly. "It goes through all space and time."

"What's it going to do, swallow me up?"

Amelia stopped and frowned. "Huh, weird," she said.

"What is it?" the Raggedy Doctor asked.

"I don't know. I just suddenly felt…old."

The Raggedy Doctor looked as though he might be reconsidering all the things the kids in school said about that mad Pond girl. "Old?"

Amelia listened at the door. "Aunt Sharon's supposed to be asleep," she said.

"Did she wake up?" the Raggedy Doctor asked.

She shook her head. "That's not her voice." She went to her bedside, picked up the cup, casually dumped the water out on the floor, and used it to listen.

"I bet it's Prisoner Zero again," the Raggedy Doctor said.

But Amelia's eyes went wide. "It's _him_!" She flung the door open, and gasped.

Where there should have been a hallway, instead there was a completely different room. Instead of being square like a normal room, it was a rounded, organic sort of shape. Toys and trinkets laid about on the floor and were hung on strings; little bits of metal that moved in perpetual balance, and a ball with a light inside that cast pinpricks like stars all over the ceiling and walls, figurines of creatures she'd never seen before, and other things she couldn't even figure out the use of. In the center of the room was a bed, on which lay a little girl about her age, perhaps a little younger, with hair as red as hers. Next to the bed knelt her Raggedy Doctor, the real one, though he wasn't raggedy anymore, he was dressed in a dark burgundy robe. He was talking to the little girl in a language she didn't understand. It sounded like he was telling her a story.

He must have heard her, because he looked around. There was something in his eyes that had not been there before when she saw him last—or at least, had been better concealed.

"Did I dream about you," the Doctor asked, "or did you dream about me?"

"But I'm not asleep," Amelia said.

The Doctor laughed, cracked and hollow. There was something stirring in him, close to the surface, like a river churned with silt after a storm. "Someone's asleep." He turned to the little girl in the bed. "You're not asleep yet, and it's past your bedtime."

"But you said I could stay up," she pleaded.

"Is he your dad?" Amelia asked the little girl. She hadn't thought about the Raggedy Doctor having kids of his own, but the thought actually didn't bother her. She and this other girl could be like sisters. They even sort of looked the part.

"Yeah," the girl answered, "that's him."

"I don't have a mum or a dad," Amelia said.

"Oh," said the other girl. "Well, you can share mine, if you'd like."

Amelia beamed. "You can have all of my aunt Sharon."

The girl laughed. "That's quite all right. Who's your friend?"

Amelia remembered she hadn't come here alone. She looked behind her, at her room still there beyond the open door, and her friend dressed as the Raggedy Doctor.

"I'm not actually sure," Amelia said. "What's your name, again?"

The boy looked at her, hurt and silent.

"Too scared to speak, I think. Never saw a room like yours before. At least not where my hallway should be."

The girl laughed again. "Your hallway? On Mount Solace?" She looked baffled at Amelia's expression. "Wild Endeavor, Gallifrey, Kasterborus?"

"Oh, Amelia Pond's not from around here," the Doctor said. "She's a visitor, from a place very far away called Earth."

"An alien?" the girl responded in excitement. "A real, live one?"

"The best kind," the Doctor said, and lurched forward suddenly, a pain lancing through him.

"Doctor!" Amelia cried out, at the same time as the girl in the bed cried, "Daddy!" The Doctor fell to his hands and knees, wincing.

"What's happening?" Amelia asked.

"Oh, it's nothing, I'm just waking up," the Doctor said. "Bit of a shock to the system, you should feel it too in a moment. So, you only have moments left to remember, and I can tell you're getting close, because you've remembered what he looked like as a child—I've never met him that way, so it didn't come out of _my_ memory. Take a good look at your friend, Amelia, the boy in the doorway there, and focus on everything you know about him. You've gone back to the beginning—that's good, focus on that, your earliest memories of him, let it unfold."

Amelia did as she was told and looked at the boy, trying with everything she had to remember where he came from, what his name was. They'd gone to school together. He picked the bologna out of his lunchmeat and gave it to her because he said he didn't like it, but she found out later from his mum that he liked it just fine. He'd been her first kiss—well, not a real kiss, she called it a butterfly kiss; it was made by fluttering her eyelashes against his cheek, and once against his lips, like the feel of a butterfly's wings beating on skin.

The Doctor, the room, and the girl all started to fade, leaving her standing in her hallway with just the boy behind her.

"I was afraid he'd take you away from me," the boy said.

"The Doctor said I'd wake up," Amelia said, "but I'm still here."

"He isn't a part of our dream anymore," the boy said. "You could leave, if you wanted to. There's enough stimulant in your system to wake an elephant." He looked frightened, lonely.

"Then how come I'm still asleep?" Amelia asked.

"You wanted to be. The Dream Lord is all about choice."

"So, the Doctor wanted to leave?"

"That would be an understatement."

"But why? He was here to help me. And he was just dreaming about his daughter, why's that so bad?"

"You really are thick," the boy said, a bit of an edge to his voice. "Couldn't you figure that one out? What's the worst kind of dream you ever have?"

"The kind where my parents are alive," Amelia said. "But those are only bad because I have to wake up. Why'd he _want _to wake up, if it's like that?"

"The Doctor is…complicated," the boy said.

"That's all I know, isn't it?" Amelia said to herself. "I mean, this is just my dream, now." She looked at him closely. "But you're still here. You're supposed to be from his mind, to hurt him."

"Ah, you're remembering."

"You're getting weaker. Not enough darkness in me to feed off of?"

The boy shrugged. "Enough. But this makes it a bit more exciting." One of the walls became transparent, and on the other side, she saw the Doctor and a woman—herself, she realized, older—in fields of wax-silver grass, under a purple sky.

"Amy," the Doctor said, tapping her cheeks lightly. "_Amy_. Any moment now, come on." The shadows in his eyes he'd acquired in the dream were still there, and deepening, as he held her limp form.

"Doctor," Amelia whispered, and put her face to the wall that was like a pane of glass.

"Do you want to go back to him?" the boy asked.

Amelia looked between them, torn. "But I still don't know your name!"

"True. But if you stay here, you may not be able to come back to him. And you may never remember me anyway."

Her fists clenched, furious. "I came here for you!" Amelia shouted. "Like hell I'm giving up on you now!" She held his gaze for a long moment, before looking back at the Doctor.

The Doctor's head was nuzzled in her hair, and…was he crying? No, not quite, but he looked near it. "Amy, Amy, Amy," he was whispering to her. "Amy, you have to wake up now. You have to wake up. I'm not losing you. Not you too."

"Isn't that what you always wanted?" the boy asked. "The Doctor, he came back for you, he really did, and he took you with him, and he cares so much about you. Look at me," the boy said, tugging at his oversized, raggedy sleeves, "I was only ever a stand-in anyway. Why are you wasting your time here, when you could be with him?"

"That's…that's not true," Amelia said. "Of course, I missed him, I…dressed you up as him, fine. But I did love you. That time we spent travelling in the TARDIS…those were the best days of my life. I had you both. My boys."

On the other side of the wall, the Doctor was rocking with her in his lap, stroking her hair. His voice came through, almost too low for her to hear. "No no no no no. Wake up, Amy, Amelia, you can do it." He fumbled in his pocket, and drew something out, a little box. _That's what he was fiddling with earlier_, Amelia thought. _That's the something I lost._ She watched expectantly as the Doctor opened it, saw something glitter inside. A ring. An engagement ring.

"See?" the boy sneered. "He loves you, he wants to marry you. Go ahead, be with him. Forget about me. You never really saw me anyway."

"I…I said yes!" Amelia shouted, triumphant. "I remember!" She punched him in the arm. "_You_ gave me that ring, stupid, you daft, wonderful…." She hugged him tightly. She'd have kissed him, too, but they were only seven, after all. "I said yes, because I love you, because I want to spend my life with you, Rory Williams—Rory, Roderick, Roryroryrory, aha!" she cried. "I drove a minibus into a house because I didn't want a world without you in it."

They were growing up, suddenly, in each other's arms, and when Amy let go of him, she saw the energy burns on his chest, and the cold glaze in his eyes. She stumbled backwards.

The corpse of her Rory looked at her sadly and said, "I did want to be up on that hill with you."

"You'll always be where I am," Amy told him, choking on her tears.

He smiled, faintly. "But what good am I? All I'll ever do now is make you sad."

She kissed his cold lips tenderly, her final goodbye. "A world that never had you in it is sadder."

"Don't—don't leave," Rory said, holding onto her hands.

"I'll be back," Amy said. "Someday."

"I'll be waiting," Rory said. "Like always, waiting for you."

A bird sang, the sweetest song, and Amy's head fell forward onto Rory's shoulder, asleep.

* * *

She woke lying on grass under a purple sky, the box with the ring in it clasped in her hands, the Doctor's hands around hers. The Doctor's head hung low, his face wrenched in pain, but that changed when he saw her flutter her eyes.

"Amy!" he said, and hugged her so tight she almost couldn't get air.

She hugged him back, the ring box still held in one of her hands. "It worked," she said. "I remembered him. I remembered Rory."

"Oh, Amy," the Doctor said, pulling back, his eyes meeting hers with a mixture of triumph and deep sympathy. "I'm glad, and…I'm sorry."

"It's…it's okay," Amy said, though she was crying. Unable to hold it back, she bawled on his shoulder, and he held her. "It's okay though," she said again, through her tears. "I needed this. I needed to cry, I didn't know why, though, and it was like a terrible itch I couldn't scratch. I…this is good," she said.

He smiled weakly, and she saw that he hadn't been immune to crying either. "Come on," he said. "Let's get back to the TARDIS before we fall asleep again."

* * *

Amy looked at the ring dangling on the chain the Doctor gave her, which the Doctor promised would never break. It caught the lights of the TARDIS, sparkling in oranges and greens. She slipped it over her head, close to her heart, forever.

She padded into the console room, having the feeling the Doctor would be there. He was, quieter than she'd ever seen him.

"I haven't been able to sleep since Karass Don Slava," Amy said.

"It's the stimulant. It'll work its way out of your system," the Doctor answered.

"You haven't slept either?"

The Doctor looked back at her, with harrowed eyes. "I avoid sleep when I can anyway."

Guilt surged through her. "You had to go through that…for my sake."

The Doctor shook his head. "It was just a dream. I went through the reality. Dreams have got nothing on that."

"That one felt pretty real," Amy said. "We both saw someone we'd lost…but yours…" she had to stop herself, or she'd start crying again.

"I got to see her grow up," the Doctor said. "In real life, I mean, not in the dream. She became a brilliant young woman, and she made me a grandfather. We had a good, good life together. I don't regret any of that. I don't want to forget her." He looked very tired.

"So tell me about her," Amy offered.

But the Doctor shook his head. "I don't think I can. Not yet." He kissed her brow. "You can tell me about Rory, though. I want to know all about him."

Amy nodded, and she began.


End file.
